The Bush foreign policy is predicated on one simple axiom: “We will stop the world’s most dangerous men from getting their hands on the world’s most dangerous weapons”. By that standard, Bush’s dealings with North Korea havebeen a wretched failure. After 6 years of fruitless saber rattling and belligerence, the North detonated a nuclear bomb in early October and put region on notice that there’s a new member in the nuclear weapons club.

For the time being, only South Korea and Japan are within range of the North’s missile systems, but as the technology improves the Taepodong 2 will eventually be capable of hitting mainland U.S.A. The bottom line is that the American people are considerably less safe with a nuclear armed DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) than they were before.

The Bush administration has had ample time to take steps to negotiate a settlement between the two traditional adversaries. Instead, they chose to aggravate the situation by trying to topple the regime by freezing bank accounts and enforcing punitive “unilateral” sanctions.

Unsurprisingly, Bush’s ham-fisted tactics have produced the opposite
result of what was intended. The North rushed ahead with its research
and quickly figured out the basic elements of nuclear bomb-production
allowing the madcap dictator in the oversized sun-glasses to build a
stockpile of between 6 to 12 nuclear weapons. Now the entire region is
on tenterhooks and frantically trying to cobble together a diplomatic
solution.

The Bush administration has stubbornly refused to sit down in
one-on-one negotiations with the North. Their refusal was supposed to
send a message that the U.S. is just “too important” to engage a vassal
state like North Korea in serious dialogue. Bush further strained
relations by including the North on its “axis of evil” list which
includes the states that the US has designated as targets for regime
change.

Additionally, Vice President Cheney delivered a blunt warning to Kim in
a speech he delivered early last year. He said, “We don’t negotiate
with evil; we defeat it.”

What could be clearer?

Given the administration’s blatant hostility, Kim Jung Il did what any
leader would do if they were facing a similar existential threat; he
developed a credible deterrent to US aggression, nuclear weapons. His
research was undoubtedly hurried along by Bush’s bellicosity.

Immediately following October’s nuclear blast, the Bush administration
reversed its policy and sent a messenger to the North Korean Embassy to
see if they would be willing to conduct secret “bilateral” negotiations
in Berlin. Bush was desperately trying to avoid the appearance that he
had completely caved in on a matter of principle, but the facts are not
in dispute. Bush’s sudden U-turn is just another unfortunate
humiliation for the country.

The Bush public relations team is trying to spin the new agreement as a
“breakthrough”. But there is no breakthrough. Bush has capitulated on
all the main issues. It’s a terrible deal and that’s why so many
conservatives are enraged and spewing their anger in the newspapers.

The agreement will remove the North from the State Department’s list of
terrorist states and provide 50,000 tons of fuel oil just for shutting
down its Yongbyon reactor. But that won’t address the north’s
clandestine nuclear program or Kim’s nuclear weapons stockpile. In
fact, these are not even on the table!

Just months ago Bush rejected the same deal saying, “We will never agree to blackmail”.

My, how things change once a country gets nukes.

The present agreement is worse than the “Agreed Framework” which was
initiated by Bill Clinton in 1994 and which was universally repudiated
by Republicans and the conservative think tanks. Nicholas Eberstadt of
the far-right American Enterprise Institute summarized it like this:

“This is substantially worse than the Agreed Framework… The (original)
agreement attempted to freeze everything that we knew about the DPRK’s
activities and probe their good faith. Now, we have agreed to a deal
that only freezes part, at most, of North Korea’s nuclear activities
for a much higher price then the earlier agreement, with a regime that
we know operates in bad faith on nuclear deals.”

Eberstadt is right. Every part of the agreement favors the North. The
United States and its allies will have to provide 50,000 tons of fuel
oil just for the privilege of sitting down at the bargaining table with
the DPRK diplomats. Shutting down Yongbyon is utterly meaningless; that
doesn’t tell us where the secret uranium enrichment program is located
and that is the fuel-source for the Kim’s nuclear weapons.

There’s no chance that the administration will persuade the North to
“denuclearize” (the administration’s word du jour). Kim knows that the
real objective of US policy is regime change and that guarantees that
he will never give up his nukes. Instead, he plans to use the upcoming
negotiations as a means of extorting more concessions from Bush and the
allies. Next, he’s expected to demand electrical power from South
Korea, additional food and medicine, and the light-water reactor which
was promised by Clinton. All the while, his nukes will remain safely
tucked away beyond reach; his only real bargaining chip.

The real danger in Bush’s policy-turnabout is the message that it sends
to Iran and any other country who wants to improve its prospects vis a
vis the United States. If Iran had any doubts that it needs nuclear
weapons to fend off the US; those doubts have been removed.

Bush’s blundering foreign policy has dealt a withering blow to nuclear
nonproliferation and paved the way for a 21st century arms race. This
is a bad deal all around and only underscores one basic truism:

Blackmail works.

More from this author:

The Breaking Point (8750 Hits)It was another bad week in Iraq. While
bodies were piling up in the Baghdad morgue and the militia
fighting steadily intensified, the Bush...

A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy? (9627 Hits)When Hillary Clinton said that her husband
Bill was the target of “a vast right-wing conspiracy”, her
critics just laughed at her. No...

Barking Mad (18222 Hits)
It’s not a comforting thought, but it’s the truth.
As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate and the feckless
congress concedes more...

Bush is apparently a "Decider" and not a "Negotiator"
The problem is, he's never made a good decision yet.

Too bad Bush and Cheney haven't decided to resign. IMPEACHMENT is apparently the only option we have left. Which is the better of the two because they should be held accountable for their blatant criminal activities.

...
In all this US articles about countries having the "potential" to strike the US, having bombs and rockets, putting the US in "danger", etc..., "foreign-policy-blundering"-pundits just seem to forget basic history; the only country who has and uses all these weapons to kill indiscriminately around the world, since so many decades, unpunished because not agreeing to simple international law, is the US. I would not expect this kind of "serious" articles from this perspective, from the main, world destabilizing rogue state, the US, but from any of the many victims.

...
…well, the point of the so called “US foreign policy blunder” is that as of today and in the future, because of the indiscriminately killings in the past, for the profits of all US presidents sponsors, the survivors have turned a little bit angry against the US. So the US must prevent these countries to have any of the weapons of mass destruction. Retaliation seems to be perfectly OK from a human feelings point of view, and don’t forget, the US happily retaliated by killing hundred thousands of innocent people for only 3000 dead in 9/11. Reminds me a little bit of Nazi-Germany tactics against underground fighters; for every dead German soldier, ten civilians had to be executed.

...
...to make it short, a blunder in US foreign policy is if a sovereign state succeeds in its interests, i.e. to keep US military or economical aggressions away, to keep the population alive, etc. A success in US foreign policy, and business as usual, and of no interest at all to the US public opinion, is if the whatever state is economically bankrupted, resources sold out to US companies, civilians killed, existing society thrashed, etc., or in other words, if the US succeeded in exporting US style democracy. How pathetic and of course, you should only impeach a US president for blunders...